Peculiarities of The Progressive, Perfect and Future Formation in Colloquial Arabic

Abstract

Arabic has three tenses: past, present and future. The past tense refers to actions that took place in the past (كتب kataba He wrote). The present tense pertains to habitual actions, or those that are currently ongoing (يكتب /yaktubu/ He writes). The future signifies actions expected to occur in the future by adding the prefix س /sa/ or the particle سوف /sawfa/ to the present tense form of the verb (سيكتب sa-yaktubu He will write). Arabic also has a perfect and an imperfect aspect, an active participle (كاتب /ka:tib/ writer) and a passive participle (مكتوب /maktu:b/ (written). Stretches of discourse containing the progressive markers عمال عم &باش  and active participle forms of sense, motion, and volition verbs as امشي walk, تعال come here, قوم get up; جالس sitting, قاعد sitting, أروح go, سامع hearing, شايف seeing and others were collected from informants and social media posts in order to find out how the aforementioned particles, lexical verbs and participles are used to express the progressive and future aspects in spoken Colloquial Arabic dialects and the grammaticalization process they went through (desemanticization, decategorization, extension and erosion). Data analysis revealed that the particles   باش/ماش (will) and هيا (let’s), verbs as خلينا , هيا,امشي ,  قوم(let’s), express futurity. Other aspectual particles as  عم عمال (are), and verbs of motion, posture, volition and sense and active participles express the Progressive Tense. In some cases, active participles of verbs of motion, posture and volition are ambiguous denoting multiple tenses and aspects as Present Progressive, Past Progressive, Present Perfect depending on the context and availability of adverbs of time. In some case active participles undergo a grammaticalization process where they change from a lexical verb to an aspect marker. Results of the study are given in detail.